Masergy Channel Sales Up 70 Percent YoY Thanks To The Zenith Partner Program

‘I think we threw some gas on this channel,’ Masergy executives tell CRN as the company celebrates its Zenith Partner Program’s one-year anniversary.

Masergy has always been a friend of the channel. But last year, the hybrid networking provider kicked up its commitment with partners by launching the Zenith Partner Program and bringing on its first-ever senior vice president of global channel sales, according to Masergy.

“I think there was a question in the channel about Masergy’s commitment, so we took this last year to re-show the channel how we are building business around them,” said Jim Glackin, who has been sitting in the channel chief seat since last July. “The results have been outstanding. The channel has really responded in a big way.”

The global Zenith Partner Program, also launched in July 2020, takes a proactive approach to selling with increased partner earnings and enhanced joint marketing strategies and resources to help solution providers capture more business. The one-year-old program is open to master agents, telecom agents, MSPs and VARs.

[Related: Masergy Launches ‘Game-Changing’ Feature To Boost Broadband Performance: Exclusive]

“Masergy never disengaged with partners, but they did re-commit and validate their model,” said Steve Rome, CRO and co-founder of Advantage Communications Group, LLC., a longtime Platinum Masergy partner.

Masergy’s one-year-old partner program and appointment of Glackin, a dedicated channel executive that has made partners “his life,” is proving to MSPs, VARs, and agents alike, that the company is serious about working alongside partners to shape the right solutions for end customers, Rome said.

“I think by bringing in [Glackin] to give [the partner program] that focus, and that gravitas has paid dividends over the last year,” he said. “Getting back more of an emphasis and branding around the channel program has just been phenomenal in helping us to innovate with Masergy.”

In addition to the Zenith Partner Program, Masergy realigned the channel into four different regions with additional channel leaders and headcount in each new territory. Glackin and his team also brought on dedicated leaders to focus on building out the VAR and distributor partner base.

“We really scaled up all around the channel over the past year,” Glackin added.

Masergy wants to help partners tap into and grow their SD-WAN and UCaaS sales. The company earlier this month launched Performance Edge, a new capability that makes public broadband connections perform with close to the same reliability and service quality of a private ethernet circuit, the company told CRN exclusively. The patent-pending capability is serving as an add-on to Masergy’s popular SD-WAN Secure and its SASE offerings, and the company is relying heavily on its partner community “revolutionize” broadband access.

The new resources and products that the Plano, Texas-based company is giving partners, coupled with the new program, is creating a groundswell of interest from partners. In fact, channel sales are up 70 percent year over year, Glackin said.

“I think we threw some gas on this channel,” he added. “The new resources and having more of a presence with partners is really what made the difference.”

Masergy is already thinking ahead to the future of the one-year old program, the company’s CEO Chris MacFarland told CRN. The next evolution of the program will involve Masergy powering up new partners, as well as existing partners that haven’t historically been active with the company in the second half of 2021, he said.

“You’re going to see us pivot more deeply into the mid-market with the digital agent community,” he said. “We think that that will continue to have significant growth with existing partners. We’re actually looking to embrace hundreds, if not 1,000 new partners here over the next two-three years.”